


Interval

by The_Cool_Aunt



Series: DISPATCH BOX [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: ACD - Freeform, Canon, Canon Compliant, Injured Sherlock, John is a Very Good Doctor, M/M, Nudity, Sexual Tension, Sherlock is a hero, Subtext, Victorian, Victorian Sherlock Holmes, Virgin Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 22:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4684247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Cool_Aunt/pseuds/The_Cool_Aunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock is injured, John needs to apply his medical skills--quite literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interval

**Author's Note:**

> This follows DISPATCH BOX: First

The dispatch box of John H. Watson, MD has revealed more of its secrets; the space created by the false bottom is filled to overflowing. As most of the manuscripts secreted in that way are, this one is written primarily by the confident hand of the doctor, but contains comments and asides in a distinct, spidery writing that make it abundantly clear that the famous consulting detective had frequent access to the pages—and some strong opinions about their content.  
  
On the very first page is one of these notes:  
  
 _John, you know that I enjoy reading these private stories very much. I do wish, however, that you would be more careful about your dates. As you sometimes do in your published works, you allow inaccuracies as to time elapsed, muddle timelines, and sometimes don’t seem to know the difference between winter and summer. It was not, in fact, “years” later that you finished our first story, but approximately eleven months. I realise that when you are writing for publication, you do this deliberately to heighten the dramatic effect (and occasionally to hide the identities of those naughtier members of European royalty), but in these pages, it is entirely unnecessary. You should strive for accuracy in all endeavours. SH_  
  
And there is a space, and then an additional note:  
  
 _I do love you._  
  
*  
  
It was a gloomy Thursday afternoon. I was alone in our rooms and at odds with myself. I couldn’t settle down with a book. I had made a half-hearted attempt to paste the articles I had clipped from the newspapers about Sherlock’s latest case into a scrapbook, but I found myself becoming distracted by the bits of stories on the reverse sides and gave up.  
  
Sherlock had left town by train on Monday and anticipated being away in Oxford for a week, working on a private case that did not seem, at least to me, to be terribly engaging or complicated. He had invited me to go along, but as I had been ruminating on our activities, I declined, stating that I had business in the city that I had been neglecting. He accepted this statement with good grace, although what I thought at the time was a trick of my imagination turned out to be fact—he had been disappointed.  
  
To my great surprise, his absence left me suffering from ennui. It had been six weeks [“six” is stricken out with a forceful pencil and “three” is written above it] since Sherlock and I had had our rather unbelievable encounter in his bed. Since then, we had been engaged in a string of cases that had both of us run quite ragged. There was no time nor energy to discuss anything, and for that I was, I admit, grateful. What was done was done, but I had no inclination whatsoever to revisit it.  
  
For, despite my tender words, which I had whispered so eagerly in his ear, I was now feeling severely guilty over the entire episode. Yes, Sherlock had had a problem. Yes, it was an embarrassing and extremely personal problem. Yes, I had assisted him with it. And yes—God help me—I had enjoyed it, and I had finally admitted to myself that over time I had begun to think about my friend in terms that were, to be blunt, deviant.  
  
Some time apart would probably do both of us good.  
  
So why then did I feel his absence so keenly?  
  
I found my ruminations returning to that morning—rather intrusively. Even the new medical journal I had picked up after abandoning the scrapbook did not keep my attention for long. I kept finding myself staring at the same paragraph for minutes at a time, not reading what was on the page. Instead, I was revisiting the incident, recalling it in great detail. At first I was ashamed, but after the third time I found myself trying to think of a word to describe his eyes, it occurred to me—I had to write it down. I wanted to preserve that morning—every minute of it. I wanted to capture it and cherish it and return to it again and again. I did not want to forget one second of it.  
  
So I decided that capture it I would.  
  
The medical journal was tossed in the general direction of Sherlock’s armchair as I rose and determinedly seated myself at my desk. I withdrew fresh paper, charged my pen, and began to write.  
  
I never intended for it to be read by anyone but myself. I realised that in order to keep it from Sherlock’s ever-sharp eyes, I would have to secrete it somewhere quite cleverly. I threw myself into my work.  
  
I was transported into another world; unaware of the lengthening shadows that indicated the approaching afternoon. As the words flowed from my pen, I found myself reliving that precious hour. No longer was I seated at my untidy desk, tucked into the corner of our sitting room. I was now back on Sherlock’s soft bed, my nightshirt tossed to the floor with his, smelling and feeling and seeing and hearing and wanting to taste him.  
  
Sherlock came home three days early.  
  
So absorbed was I in my task that he took me completely by surprise and interrupted me in the very act of dipping my pen in the inkwell. I paused and attempted to look as if I was writing up something somewhat dull.  
  
“You’re home!” I managed to sputter.  
  
“Excellent deduction,” he smiled. He hung his traveling cape and hat carefully on the coat rack.  
  
“Why so early?”   
  
“Please remind me not to go away without you ever again,” he declared. “I always seem to get the worst rooms when I’m on my own,” he explained, arching backward to relieve the strain on his back. “The mattress I had was stuffed with old boots, I do believe. I was awake for hours every night. Couldn’t stand it one more night.”  
  
“What does that have to do with me?” I asked, bewildered.  
  
“When we travel together I never have trouble sleeping; you somehow manage to secure better lodging.” He sounded mystified—as if I had been charming snakes rather than requesting two rooms, adjoining if possible, at any one of the dozens of inns we had visited.  
  
I laughed at his long face. “That’s because I always give you the nicer room,” I explained.  
  
“Ah.” He nodded acceptance of my explanation without question. “So I am justified—I will not go away without you ever again.”  
  
“You should have wired to tell me about your change in plans,” I reprimanded.  
  
“Why? Am I interrupting something important?” he teased.  
  
Upon seeing his familiar face—his keen features and warm smile and blazing eyes—I felt my mood lightening considerably as well. “Mrs Hudson would have had something ready for you to eat,” I explained.  
  
“Not hungry.” He waved his hand dismissively.  
  
“Go change out of your traveling clothes. You’ll get soot everywhere and Mrs Hudson will have your head.”  
  
He nodded (having been on the receiving end of one of Mrs Hudson’s lectures too many times to count), but when he bent to retrieve his traveling bag, he suddenly grunted and a look of undeniable discomfort crossed his handsome features.  
  
“Is it your back? Is it that bad?” I was concerned. He rarely if ever had problems of that nature. Bruises and lumps—constantly. Blackened eyes—occasionally. Sword slashes—unfortunately. Whip marks—horrifyingly. Bullet holes—(thankfully) rarely. He hadn’t even had a broken bone (except that tiny bone in his foot that he got tripping over a small dog at Paddington Station and didn’t he make my life a tortured one when I tried to get him to stay off it long enough to heal?). So for him to express his discomfort led me to believe that this was not a slight twinge.  
  
“It is certainly bothering me more than I would like,” he admitted.  
  
“Let me get your bag.” I hastened to do so, and he followed me into his bedroom, where I placed it on the small chair that stood in front of his dressing table (being Sherlock, his “dressing table” held, in addition to the usual comb and bottle of hair oil and a few boxes that held collar and cuff buttons, an impressive collection of stage “make-up”—grease paint, putty, and the like—and at the moment a wig stand that held a wig that amused me—it featured bone-straight hair of the most unlikely shade of yellow—nearly white—that I could imagine).   
  
I turned and caught his expression—it was tight; the light mood of his arrival gone. He appeared to me to be frustrated and upset.  
  
“Why not change?” I encouraged. “Or would a hot bath help?”  
  
“I don’t know what will help. I’ve never really felt anything like this.” He sounded almost beaten.  
  
“What happened? This can’t just be from a lumpy mattress,” I added from a practical (and medical) point of view, moving over to him and helping him off with his frock coat.  
  
“I think I… overextended myself,” he admitted.  
  
I turned back to his bag and began to unpack it. I smiled at the three carefully folded, crisp shirts, still unworn. He was as fastidious as a cat, and insisted on a clean shirt every day. Mrs Hudson charged him extra for his laundry. “What did you do?” I finally asked. I handed him clean clothing. “Change out of that stuff,” I instructed. “You reek of second class. Then tell me what you did.”  
  
“It was… a miscalculation, that’s all,” he explained, beginning to remove his clothing by untying his tie and then unbuttoning and removing his collar.  
  
“What sort of miscalculation?” I prodded. He was being somewhat ridiculously parsimonious with his explanation. “Did you do something foolish?” I ventured, realising that perhaps what he had done to cause himself such distress was an embarrassing error. “It’s all right. We all have moments like that.”  
  
“It didn’t seem foolish at the time,” he explained carefully, pulling his braces down from his shoulders and unfastening his shirt. He winced as he pulled it and his vest over his head.  
  
“You know, Sherlock, I am a doctor,” I pointed out a bit dryly.  
  
“Yes?” He slid off his trousers and drawers, displaying his slim silhouette completely. He was entirely unaffected; as he always was when at home. I recall being quite surprised at this when we were first sharing rooms. Despite his literally “buttoned up” appearance when in the company of others, when away from the public eye he was immodest to an almost embarrassing degree. Fortunately, being a medical man, I was accustomed to seeing people in all stages of undress—even ladies, I admit—but his casual attitude towards—well, to be frank—nudity—always surprised me.  
  
It did cross my mind at one point that I was likely the first person to actually share with him (at least for more than three days—which seemed to be the limit of most sane folks), so perhaps it simply didn’t occur to him that he was supposed to be modest in another’s company. Or… and I had reflected on this perhaps more than might be deemed seemly—was it his theatrical leanings? For in addition to his remarkable facility with make-up (he had, I admit, fooled me more than once with a ludicrous disguise—the ultimate instance of that being, of course, his dramatic return to my life three years after he left), he had shown on many occasions a decidedly dramatic bent. Was some time on “the boards,” as they say, perhaps in a touring company, in his distant past? I longed to ask him.  
  
Back to the matter at hand, however. “Sherlock,” I stated firmly, “I need you to tell me what you did so I can treat you as you might need.”  
  
“Mmm,” he responded. He went over to the bed and began to dress himself in the clean clothing I had laid out for him.  
  
“Well?”  
  
He sighed. “I suppose I will share it with you. You’re bound to read about it in tomorrow’s newspapers anyway.”  
  
I stilled in my action of gathering up his soiled clothing. “Newspapers?!” I said in alarm. “What in heaven’s name did you do _now?”_  
  
“I think a sherry would be nice,” he replied, attempting to deflect my ire.  
  
“Pathetic, Sherlock,” I scolded him whilst simultaneously shepherding him back out into the sitting room. “And yes, I prescribe a sherry.”  
  
“Thank you,” he murmured, allowing himself to be seated on his cosy armchair.  
  
I poured two glasses of sherry and gave him one, then sank into my own chair and took a sip. “So,” I started immediately, “if I’m to read about my friend in the newspapers tomorrow, I think I deserve an explanation tonight.”  
  
He sighed and took a sip of his own drink. “This is nice,” he commented distractedly, already considering how to tell me his tale. I harrumphed expectantly. That usually worked on him, and fortunately this was one of my successful endeavours. He managed to look a bit guilty.  
  
“Please, do go on,” I replied archly. “I find your lack of detail disappointing,” I added a bit mischievously, echoing his so-often-expressed admonishment.  
  
“All right,” he finally sighed. “If I tell you the whole story, will you do something for my back? Oh, perhaps you should also reassure Mrs Hudson, who will undoubtedly read the more lurid version of the tale in her favourite rag.”  
  
“Procrastinating, Sherlock.”  
  
“Oh, all right,” he huffed. “What occurred is just this: I was on the platform in the Oxford station. I had just arrived and was searching out the ticket booth to arrange transportation home (that you hadn’t booked either—I truly dislike travelling without you). It’s a busy station in the morning,” he described somewhat carelessly. “There were many people on the platform with me, including a family of six: a father and mother—he was Scottish and had played the bagpipes as a child—and four children. Their ages were approximately ten years down to a rather small creature in a perambulator.”  
  
“All right,” I responded to show that I was listening.  
  
“They were having some sort of issue about their luggage—something had gone astray, from what I could ascertain—and both father and mother were in a rather animated conversation with a porter. The oldest child—a girl—had been charged with watching her younger siblings.”  
  
My heart began to beat a bit more rapidly. I had a feeling that I knew where his narrative was taking us.  
  
“She was doing as admirable a job as she could. Her younger charges—a girl, approximately eight years of age, and a boy, approximately six—were lively things, having been cooped up in their carriage for so long.”  
  
I smiled a bit sadly at what was essentially his excuse for what occurred next.  
  
“So it is hardly surprising that she couldn’t quite manage. Both younger boy and girl were lively, and the baby in the pram was fussing rather loudly.”  
  
He paused, and there was such a long silence that I finally had to prompt him.  
  
“What? Oh, yes,” he responded to my subtle throat-clearing. “So she can hardly be blamed when things got a bit muddled. She was talking rather earnestly to her sister, who had apparently dropped some small trifle—I never was sure if it was a doll or a book—and she simply didn’t observe. It wasn’t her fault.”  
  
I frowned. He seemed rather fixed on absolving the oldest sibling of the small family. I wondered why, but did not interrupt his tale further.  
  
“So when her brother grasped the handle of the pram, she might have thought it was simply to rock it a bit, to shush the baby.” He seemed to be justifying the young boy’s actions as well. “It was a heavy pram—with that many children, I’m sure they invested in something quite substantial and costly and used it for each child in turn—and he was—well, he was six. He could barely see over the handle. He reached up and grasped it, and he did—he did just rock it. It was difficult for him. He was quite small for his age, you see, so in order to put it into motion, he threw his entire weight onto the handle—quite lifted himself off the ground, actually.”  
  
My heart sank. His description was alarmingly clear and vivid and I knew for certain what was going to occur next.  
  
“The next train was an express,” he continued, and my heart sank further. “I know I am no expert at physics, John, but I do understand gravity and thrust and friction, and also the effects of a weight of that nature on well-oiled wheels.”  
  
“It didn’t…?” I couldn’t help myself. My throat felt tight and dry.  
  
“It started to. I was a few feet away this entire time, but I missed the first forward motion of the carriage whilst attempting to solve my own issues regarding transport. But I seemed to finally have gotten it through to the porter what I was desiring, and he had set off, and that’s when I saw it.” He swallowed, and it upset me more than I care to admit to see my friend so distressed. “The carriage—the baby carriage and the baby—had started rolling. The boy had released his grip on the handle—I don’t think it was intentional—he was staring at his hands in some astonishment.”  
  
“Oh, Sherlock,” I breathed.  
  
“In fact, by the time I had freed my attentions, it had apparently already been in motion, for it was rather further away than I recalled. In fact, it was actively rolling when I laid eyes on it, and yes, you are right and I am sorry to distress you at the roundabout way I’ve arrived at my point—it was rolling rather rapidly towards the tracks.”  
  
“My God, Sherlock!” I exclaimed. “You don’t mean…”  
  
“I am grateful for my skills and training in fencing and the Oriental arts,” he answered quietly. “Never more so than at that moment. I don’t recall consciously deciding to do it, or dropping my things. I just knew that I had to stop that pram from rolling off the platform and directly into the path of the oncoming train.”  
  
He paused and swallowed, the image obviously vivid in his mind’s eye.  
  
“But suddenly, there I was. I had travelled a good ten feet in the amount of time it takes to tell you about it, and I reached out and grasped the handle of the carriage, and I… I pulled back with all of my weight and strength. It wasn’t easy. It was, as I said, a sturdy thing, and weighed a rather alarming amount, and it had been rolling at a rather lively rate.”  
  
“But… you managed it?” I exhaled, belatedly realising that I had been holding my breath.  
  
“I did. It was not one of my more graceful moments, I admit. The weight of the carriage, the speed at which it was travelling, and a small defect of the platform worked against me. Instead of simply halting its forward motion—and I can only surmise it was a combined effect of my uneven grasp on the handle and a trick of the planks—it actually swung somewhat sideways, and I was pulled along with it.”  
  
“Oh, Sherlock.” I understood at that instant what had happened to his back.  
  
“But I did manage to still it, and just as the express rushed past us. The baby—who was sitting up this entire time, gazing at me—coughed as the steam and smoke engulfed us.”  
  
“Oh, thank God! You saved the baby!” I was overjoyed. I really had not been able to tell from his tone in which direction his tale was to go.  
  
That gave me pause, suddenly. Why would his tone; his face—his very bearing—be so ambiguous? He had been a hero, hadn’t he? Why was he so seemingly uncomfortable?  
  
“That is wonderful news, Sherlock—beyond all reckoning. I imagine the family—the parents—were profuse in their thanks?”  
  
I watched his face, already long with a yet-unnamed anxiety, fall entirely into confusion and despair.  
  
“That’s what… that’s not what I was after. I mean, I did it just because—well, that’s what one does. But their reaction was… puzzling.”  
  
Sherlock often found human emotions puzzling. Do not misconstrue me--he could correctly interpret and even anticipate people’s reactions to certain circumstances, but, like a scholar who can recite a memorised passage in Greek perfectly but, when questioned, is unable to answer a single question as to its meaning, he more often than not actually did not _understand_ them. They baffled him, to be honest. He understood that jealousy, for example, was a great motivator for crime, but he himself seemed unable to connect that abstract to an actual emotion.   
  
I do not entirely understand it. He certainly experiences all the emotions familiar to mankind. He experiences fury and confusion and envy and joy. I know this for a fact. It’s more that he cannot apply his own experiences to those of others.  
  
[The narrative is interrupted at this point with a rather emphatically-pencilled note, scrawled diagonally across the last paragraph: Please stick to the facts, my dear friend. Your attempts at ‘analysing’ me are clumsy at best and embarrassing at worst.]  
  
“What did they do?” I was genuinely perplexed.  
  
“The father—I never did catch their names—accused me of pushing the carriage towards the tracks myself, and his wife complained that I had apparently—in my eagerness to get a hold of the carriage’s handle—pushed her young son down.”  
  
“Oh. Oh! Well… wait. What happened then?”  
  
“They summoned a policeman.”  
  
I have rarely heard Sherlock so miserable.  
  
I noted that his glass was empty and hastily recharged it.  
  
That and two additional glasses of the sweet liquor and he eventually revealed to me that yes, the couple had initially summoned a constable and accused him of endangering their children, using a few select and decidedly unsavoury words to describe his actions and his character. He had, of course, defended himself most vehemently, and, as it turned out, several witnesses on the platform and even the other three children confirmed his version of the horrific tale.  
  
“But even when they knew that… knew that what I had done… they didn’t seem a bit grateful, or even afraid. I would think that they would at the very least express a rather effusive gratitude that their infant was safe. I don’t mean,” he continued, “gratitude towards me in particular. My experience leads me to believe that most people in that situation would thank a deity. Is this not correct?”  
  
“Oh… well, yes.” I had been taken by surprise by his unanticipated question, but yes, he was correct. Many parents would, faced with that situation, thank a (sometimes unfathomable and horribly whimsical) Christian God for the safety of their child.  
  
“But they didn’t. Nothing like it. The constable took everyone’s statements and someone got me a cup of tea and eventually a porter arranged for my transportation home, but even when I was departing, I could hear them arguing quite animatedly.”  
  
“Oh, Sherlock,” I breathed. “That’s horrid.”  
  
“So I am not mistaken in construing their reaction as atypical?” He stared into the small glass that he held delicately between finger and thumb, holding it up to observe the effect of the gaslight as it streamed through the amber liquid.  
  
“No. Not at all. I do wonder…” my mind began churning all these facts. Sherlock was the master of physical clues, no doubt, but I had found that my milieu was the miasma of human emotion. “I wonder if something similar to this hadn’t happened before, and they felt terribly guilty for not watching their children more closely, and you know that sometimes guilt comes out in odd ways—such as shouting at the man who saved their child’s life and accusing him of causing the entire incident instead of admitting that their own negligence was actually—even if not intentionally—responsible.”  
  
“Oh,” he commented after a long pause.  
  
“So is that how you actually injured your back?” I felt that a change of topic would clear the fog that was threatening to envelope and obscure my friend from me.   
  
“I didn’t realise immediately,” he responded dolefully. “I was on the next train back to London. You know the length of that journey.”  
  
“When you finally stood up, you realised how stiff you were,” I dictated, familiar with this tale.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“That’s perfectly normal,” I explained and I had to smile at his glare. Sherlock hated— _hated_ —to be called ‘normal.’ “You solved the case more quickly than anticipated,” I added, attempting to soothe him.  
  
“Of course,” he responded—oh, the arrogance! I do love that. “It was the brother—the brother of the wife. Naturally.”  
  
“Naturally,” I echoed. I would get the full details from him the next day. It was not, at that moment, my primary concern. “You’re in quite a bit of pain.”  
  
He glanced at me warily. Oh, how he hated to be called out in that way—but I really didn’t feel that I had a choice. I am, after all, a doctor, and he was clearly (despite the copious sherry flowing) still in pain. He nodded, slowly and reluctantly.  
  
“You know, you probably did some damage. Hopefully it’s just a strained muscle. Would you like anything for it? I can give you a draught for the pain.” I rarely offered him pain killers and he even less often requested them except to treat his headaches, which—and this is another story entirely—he sometimes experienced in a frightening and crippling fashion.  
  
“No. The sherry is very nice.” That was his way of explaining that he was becoming relaxed and, as a result, experiencing some relief.  
  
“That’s good,” I explained. “That means it is probably muscular strain. We need to increase blood flow to encourage healing.” I considered for a moment whilst he finished his drink. “Would you like me to rub it?” I finally offered.  
  
He blinked. This was clearly not what he was expecting.  
  
“I mean, rub your back? We can go to the baths tomorrow and you can get a proper steam—that will certainly help—but for tonight, so you can sleep—would you like me to rub it a bit?”  
  
“Will that help?”  
  
“I wouldn’t be offering if I didn’t think so,” I pointed out.   
  
“Oh. Right.” He considered for a moment. “I suppose, if you think it will help. Yes. That would be acceptable.”  
  
I almost laughed at his stiff response. “It’s all right, you know,” I pointed out. “I am a doctor.”  
  
So I got him into his bedroom again. “Take off your shirt and lie face down on the bed,” I instructed. I rolled up my sleeves. He did so, falling face-forward onto the mattress gratefully. If I did this correctly, I reflected, he would fall asleep, a decidedly positive outcome of the process. I sat beside him.  
  
I cannot, I believe, completely convey the feeling of placing my hands on the back of my friend, Sherlock Holmes. I have commented on his thin frame and his deceptively thin but strong, sinewy muscles, and I have not exaggerated. He did not have an ounce of extra flesh on his figure. He was all bone and taut muscle. I am still, if I might brag a bit, in excellent condition, despite the impairment of my war injuries and somewhat more sedentary (at times; and at times ridiculously active) lifestyle, but as the years have progressed I still have noted a somewhat disheartening softening of certain bits of me.  
  
“You’re getting fat,” my wife had observed.  
  
I hadn’t replied, despite being stung by this comment and despite wanting to reply “You’re getting fatter.”  
  
I was not getting ‘fat,’ but I was not in my mid-twenties any longer.  
  
But, here I was, in the present, with my hands (that I had warmed by briskly rubbing them together—the heat caused by this friction is truly remarkable) laid squarely on the prominent ribs.  
  
“Oh,” he breathed at the warmth.  
  
I smiled at his exhalation. I knew that the heat, plus a modest amount of rubbing, would truly help. I began at his shoulders. “You are so tightly wound,” I commented. It was like rubbing skin-covered logs.  
  
For the next ten minutes or so, there was silence as I worked on him. I moved slowly and methodically from shoulders and neck to shoulder blades and finally lower down. He winced and shifted under my grasp.  
  
“That’s it? Right there?” I inquired unnecessarily. I could feel the knot—halfway between his too-prominent shoulder blades and his protruding hip bones—beneath my fingers. Yes, he had strained a muscle quite badly. I gentled my touch, stroking evenly over it rather than the more energetic motion I had been using on his rock-hard neck. “This is going to take a few days to heal, you know,” I told him.  
  
He had turned his head on his pillow, so I could see his face as it drew down into a frown. “That is an inconvenience,” he grumbled. “I have a great deal to accomplish this week.”  
  
“Such as?” I challenged. He had planned on being away all week, after all. I gave him a small smile as he didn’t reply. “You will accomplish nothing but resting and some light exercise,” I instructed.   
  
“Dull.”  
  
“Surely there are things you can accomplish whilst resting? How about helping me update your scrapbook? I’ve got newspaper clippings and notes, but they’re all in a jumble.”  
  
“So you can torture the public with more lurid tales of the most unlikely nature?” The negativity of his comment was tempered a great deal by the tone of his voice, which was affectionate and light.  
  
“Yes. And I’ll have more clippings after tomorrow’s story is published, I take it?”  
  
“Yes, I suppose. The station master had sent word to a local newspaper office almost immediately. A rather odd reaction, now that I consider it.”  
  
“People like to read sensational stories of that nature,” I pointed out. “I suppose they got your name from the constable.”  
  
“Yes, I imagine so.”  
  
I realised that he sounded rather tired, and that I had paused in my ministrations. I started to rub him again, moving now further down on his back. “You are too thin,” I commented before I could stop myself. He disliked it when I meddled in that way.  
  
“Mmm,” was his unenergetic retort. He was completely worn out, then, and yes, he did actually fall asleep before I was done. I felt him relax beneath my hands and a glance at his tranquil face confirmed my supposition.  
  
I would cover him as he lay, I decided. If he woke later, he might or might not put on nightclothes; I was not concerned either way. Leaving him undisturbed was my priority. I rose from the bed as carefully as I could. I pulled a blanket over him, lowered the gas so it cast only a dim, soft light in the room, and turned towards the door to the sitting room.  
  
I cannot say what possessed me to return to his bedside, bend over, and gently kiss his temple.  
  
*  
  
The next few days were, as I had predicted, painful—for him as he struggled with the injury and for me as I struggled with him. An injured Sherlock was as fussy as a teething infant.  
  
It wasn’t that he was admitting that he was in extreme pain. If he had done that, it might have actually been easier. I would have gladly prepared a draught of something that would ease it somewhat. Instead, his approach to discomfort was to find fault with every single thing in our rooms—including myself.  
  
The gas was either up too high or down too low. The fire smoked (the irony of him complaining about that whilst consuming cigarettes at an alarming rate had both Mrs Hudson and I shaking with suppressed laughter). The bell had an unpleasant tone. One of the newspapers had begun to use an inferior ink and the odour was making him feel ill. It was too warm in the sitting room and too cool in his bedroom.  
  
As for me, I did not cut the pieces out of the newspaper neatly enough. My taste in clothing was far too faddy, and I had apparently found the only blind tailor in London. I needed a haircut. I needed to have Mrs Hudson replace the button on my Norfolk jacket. I chewed too loudly.  
  
“All right,” I finally burst out as the shadows began to lengthen in the mellow afternoon. “That is quite enough.”  
  
“Enough what?” he returned peevishly. I had just gotten him settled on the sofa, which I had moved until it was as far away from the smoking, too-warm fire as possible and angled so neither the gaslight nor the sunlight was directly in his eyes.  
  
“Why can’t you just admit that you’re in pain, let me dose you, and let us have a bit of peace?” I shot back. I went to retrieve my bag, which I kept in my bedroom. Upon my return, I was pleased to see that he looked a bit contrite.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he admitted as I prepared a dose of laudanum. I rarely offered it to him, but I admit that not only did I think that _he_ needed to sleep, but that _I_ needed him to sleep. “It’s that the pain is in my trunk,” he explained. “If one has a pain in an extremity, one can distance oneself from it, quite literally, but this—it hurts every time I take a breath.”  
  
“I know,” I replied patiently. I handed him the small glass of elixir. “Take that now and try to sleep a bit. I’ll have Mrs Hudson bring up a late supper. All right?” He sighed and obediently downed the draught. “Now, would you like it if I read to you until you fall asleep?”  
  
He nodded and must have been feeling contrite indeed because he didn’t even ask me to read anything in particular. Instead, I picked up an issue of _Pall Mall_ magazine several months old and began to read: “This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment.”   
  
He was asleep before the first appearance of the villain of the piece, a black cobra named Nag.  
  
And, as I had done upon his return, I gently brushed my lips over his forehead as he slept.  
  
*  
  
The newspaper articles were worse than anticipated. I was horrified to read the lurid headlines:  
  
FAMILY TRAGEDY AVERTED  
  
Famous Detective Saves Infant  
  
Hero Receives Accolades  
  
The articles were, for the most part, so wildly inaccurate as to be unrecognizable, and if I hadn’t gotten confirmation of it straight from his mouth, I would not have known that this was the same story that my friend had shared.  
  
“’… at the last possible second he dashed forward and swept the child up in his arms, handing her safely to her shocked parents. The father and mother of the endangered infant threw themselves at the heroic detective with cries of gratitude,’” he hissed. “’”No, I have no need of remuneration,” he declared nobly. “My reward is seeing the smile on the child’s dear face and the joy in the hearts of her family.”’ What utter twaddle! The only thing this one has correct is the time of the express train,” he commented bitterly, throwing the newspaper vehemently onto the floor. “I am shocked that they spelt the name of the station correctly.”  
  
I glanced at the newspaper that I was holding. “Well, in this one, they actually didn’t,” I pointed out. And I admit that I then did a very ungentlemanly thing, for the entire spectacle was just so grotesque and outrageous that I couldn’t hold it in a second longer. I began to laugh.  
  
I was relieved beyond measure when Sherlock, rather than being further insulted, began to laugh as well. “It’s really pretty awful,” he chortled, wincing as the motion of his chest made his back pain worse. “I am astounded that they were correct in the total number of children, the name of the constable, and indeed the day of the week.”  
  
“Should you write a letter?” I inquired, calming myself down a bit.  
  
“No. It’s not worth the bother. I really don’t need the accolades,” he remarked, poking at the offending paper with his foot. “I just did what anyone else would have done.”  
  
I smiled at him; when he was like that he seemed very childlike and innocent.  
  
I loved him that way.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Rudyard Kipling, “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” first published in November 1893 in Pall Mall magazine.


End file.
